Ahhh, YouTube. One of the greatest apps created. People all over the planet, talented or not, wealthy, modest, or not, super good looking, fairly attractive, or not, anyone can be a star. All you have to do is crack the code. Oh, and don’t piss off the gate keepers.
Well, I’m not in this for fame, and certainly not fortune. I just want to share my video diary with anyone who finds it interesting. But, apparently, this image has pissed off a gate keeper, or two, maybe even three, royally.
We uploaded this thumbnail with our last video, episode 51. And YouTube immediately took it down, claiming that it violated their sex and nudity policy.
“When flagged, YouTube removes thumbnails that show nudity, sexually provocative content or portray shocking violence. The image in this thumbnail may be acceptable in the context of the video, but we’ve determined it’s inappropriate for a thumbnail.” They said it contains nudity, sexual provocativeness or shocking violence. Seriously?
Sex? No.
Nudity? No.
Shocking violence? Umm, again, NO.
So I appealed. The next day, I received this email from them.
“Hi Sailing Wind Therapy,
We have reviewed your appeal for the following:
Thumbnail on video: A Fever of Spotted Eagle Rays. E51
After taking another look, we can confirm that your content does not violate our Community Guidelines.
Thanks for your patience while we reviewed this appeal. Our goal is to make sure content doesn’t violate our Community Guidelines so that YouTube can be a safe place for all – and sometimes we make mistakes trying to get it right. We’re sorry for any frustration our mistake caused you, and we appreciate you letting us know.
How does this impact your content
To make this right, your content has been reinstated.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to us here.
Thanks, The YouTube Team”
Yay!!! Someone at YouTube has a heart and a rational mind.
So, what does any YouTuber with this sort of email do? They immediately upload the thumbnail again. And I did. Ten minutes later, it was removed for violating the same policy! Now I was a repeat offender! And again, I appealed, this time copying and pasting the above copied email.
“See? Look. You just said I could!”
“Well, we changed our minds. You can’t. And now we’ve given you a violation strike since you’re a repeat offender.”
WTF?
In this picture, my cousin, Hannah, and I are about to pick up a mooring ball at Warderick Wells in The Bahamas. It’s probably my favorite place. If you watched any of our videos, you already know that.
Anyway, I’m holding a boat hook in my left hand and giving Jeff hand signals with my right hand. He can’t see the ball from the helm station when it gets close to the bow. We have a system. It works.
Apparently, I’m guessing, someone at YouTube found this picture horribly offensive. Is Hanna’s swimming suite too small? If that’s the case, thousands of other channels should be dinged. Is Pirate speak offensive? (I guess you could ask Amber Heard.) Or maybe, just maybe, someone at YouTube thinks the boat hook is a harpoon and I’m about to take out four spotted eagle rays!
You’ve got to be kidding! We appealed again.
“I know you await feedback from our internal team regarding your concern with your rejected thumbnail. Let me provide you with the information shared by our internal team.
“Upon checking, it appears that we are experiencing a technical issue with the repeated removal of the thumbnail on this video. We have highlighted this to our Engineering team and are already working on a solution. In the meantime, please try uploading a different thumbnail.”
Try uploading a different thumbnail? Did anyone at YouTube look at the uploaded thumbnail? They’ve taken it down twice and now I’m forever scarred!
I’ll keep waiting for that feedback from their internal team.
Please let me know what you think.
April 2022